Competence and Confidence Partners in Policymaking (C2P2): Family Leadership for Inclusive

Competence and Confidence Partners in Policymaking (C2P2): Family Leadership for Inclusive Education in Non-Traditional Settings

February 2015: Understanding Evaluations: What Do the Results Mean for Your Child?with PRESENTER Annemarie Clarke, Corporate Officer, SPIN

TRANSCRIPT

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> Good evening. Welcome to Competence and Confidence Partnership in Policymaking Family Leadership for Inclusive Education in Non-Traditional Settings. Or as we call it, fondly C2P2FL. My name is Cathy Roccia-Meier. I am the project coordinator for this program. We are going to have our understanding evaluations training tonight. What do the results mean for my child? With Annemarie Clark, PhD, corporate officer from SPIN. A little information about C2P2 Family Leadership. It of course is brought to you by the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University. And our funding comes from the Pennsylvania Developmental Disability Council. Just some little basics about our program. It is designed to support families, and inclusive education in nontraditional settings, which include home schools, cyber charter schools, charter schools, private schools, and parochial schools. Of course all of our sessions have relevance to all individuals with disabilities. A little more information. We also, our project includes online leadership development training which is what you're participating now. We also offer free one-on-one parent consultant support from our trained parent consultants with PEAC, online resources, and we are having an upcoming live session in the spring of 2015. Here are a list of just some of the available archives that we have, webinars that we have archived on our site. If you look at the bottom you can see the address that you can't go to. You can always Google it, Institute on Disabilities at Temple University. We are under Programs for Family Leadership. And you can see all of the past webinars that we've had over the last few years. In addition to the webinars, the PowerPoints, other supporting materials are available at that location. And as you can see we've had several different topics as well. Additionally, our next save the dates is our next is our next webinar Wednesday which is the same date in March, March 18th. At this time we are going to be doing a session on cyber safety. It's going to be a really interesting, exciting session for all of our families. We're also adding a new component to this program. As you see we have an email address listed there cybersafetyC2P2FL @templeuniversity.edu. And we are going to be taking your questions up until March 17th. So at any point throughout the next month. Please send us your question. Whatever your area of concern is thoughts or interests. We're going to collect them and answer them online at the next session. It will also help guide our session to make sure you're getting the most out of the session and the information that you really need. And we are following up this year with our live event a transitions forum at Visions for Equality in Philadelphia, May 9th. It's going to be on secondary transitions. So if you have a child in middle school, late elementary school, and onward this is the session for you. You're going to get information on what you need to do to start preparing your child when they're younger, as well as what you need to do when they get older and when you want them to move forward. We will be taking applications for this session and space will be limited. It will give you a great opportunity to hear presenters as well as network with other families. So a little more details about the components of this program. We mentioned our one on one parent consultant program. This is through the Pennsylvania Education for All Coalition that we collaborate with. Our parent consultants will be matched with you to help you, assist you with any of your needs. And some of the support that can be offered is in person, over the phone, or over email. There is a link listed here that you can go to to complete the form and request a parent consultant. Additionally, if you have any questions you can always as I mentioned before, go to our website and you can scroll through it to get to this location as well. And some of the ways that, excuse me. Some of the ways that PEAC consultants can assist you are listed here. Whether it be getting resources and support, understanding your rights, going over your IEP, individualized education plan or evaluation report, suggesting strategies attending IEP meetings. Pretty much anything you need, we can help you support. We also have online resources. We have a Facebook page, which is a closed group. Again, the link is listed here and you can always reach this to our main website. You will be accepted within a few days, and we do keep it as a closed room so that we can comfortably speak about whatever we would like to discuss. We hope you will join our Facebook page. We are hoping to build a robust community of families for discussions. And some basic housekeeping items. If you go to the Q&A box and you have a question about tonight's topics. This is where you are going to type in your questions. You click the question mark symbol at the top right of your screen to open the Q&A box. And then you type your question. However, if you have a technical question. If you're having difficulty and you need support, you will go to the chat box at the lower portion of your screen, select the name tech help in the menu. So again it is Q&A for questions for our presenter and for technical support. It's the chat box. And again tonight's webinar is understanding evaluations. What do the results mean for my child's with Annemarie Clarke. I just want to remind everyone that at the end of the session you are going to be asked to do a brief evaluation on tonight's webinar. We greatly appreciate if you take the time to complete this evaluation at helps us know what we need to do to move forward. If you stay on your webinar as soon as the program closes your website should go right to this survey. You will not be able to click on the survey in the screen. It will automatically take you there. Additionally, after the session we will be emailing everyone with information about the session, including notice that the PowerPoint will be upgraded to the website as well as the archive webinar and other documents that relate to this session. So again, we are now going to move into Annmarie Clarke. And a little bit about Annemarie. She is the Corporate Officer for Behavioral and Developmental Services at SPIN, where she oversees SPIN's Philadelphia Autism Center for Excellence. She is a licensed psychologist and a certified school psychologist, with extensive experience working with young children and families, particularly those impacted by autism. She obtained her masters in counseling psychology from LaSalle University and a doctorate in school psychology for Temple University. She taught in the graduate psychology programs at La Salle University and Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine for almost 20 years. She served as Commission Member on the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Commission on Children's Behavioral Health in 2006 and 7. And currently serves on the leadership committee for the Philadelphia Autism Project. I hope you enjoy her fabulous presentation.

> Cathy thank you so much for that nice introduction. Hi everybody. I'm glad to be spending some time with you this evening. And hoping to help you understand evaluations that your children may be receiving in different venues. Our goals for this evening, we have about four of them, basically what I wanted to try and do is provide an overview of different types of evaluations that your child may be receiving. Consider how we could use those different evaluations together more effectively, perhaps. And look at how the results of the evaluations may link to interventions and services for your children through either the educational system or the behavioral health system perhaps. And then answer any questions you have about using evaluations to support success in school and beyond for your child. So I wanted to start with a few terms because I know over the time that I've worked with families different terms get banded about in terms of what exactly is an evaluation or what is an assessment. So essentially measurement I wanted to start with. That's the basic process where we're trying to figure out the different dimensions of an attribute. And really, if you think about a ruler as a measurement right we're using a ruler to try to measure the length of something and length is the attribute of an object. So the length of a table. The length of a chair. Something like that. And in psychology or education we also use measurement. We are using different tools to measure different attributes that children or adolescents may be experiencing such as reading level, math levels, and things like that.

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An assessment is building on different measurement and it's a process really, where we're gathering information to monitor progress or make decisions about a child. And it certainly includes tests and measurements, but it also would include observations, interviews, and things like that. Evaluation is a piece that builds on that and sort of integrates with it and essentially that's a process where we are looking to determine whether the person meets any preset criteria. And that could be in this case, what we are evaluating in schools. We are evaluating often to see if the child meets the preset criteria for eligibility for special education or perhaps in the behavioral health community, or the medical community. We may be evaluating to determine whether the child meets the criteria for a particular diagnostic assignment. So essentially, with that evaluation we're looking at the evaluation essentially as the most complex process. We're trying to figure out whether again as I said that child is eligible for a particular diagnosis, or particular educational classification through the evaluation. And related to that, then we're trying to make a determination of what kind of services and supports would promote that child's success either within the educational environment, or with some sort of related service that could promote success in the educational environment. I wanted to highlight for the listeners different types of evaluations. Because one of the things that is important to remember when we look at evaluations is that when they are obtained from different settings or different sort of venues such as medical evaluation versus a behavioral health evaluation, they have different mandates assigned to them. And we are going to talk about that in a little bit. But basically I think for children. The three types of evaluations overall, could be a medical evaluation a behavioral health evaluation, and an educational evaluation. With those three primary types of evaluations providing different information that could be useful, and could be integrated in order to better understand a child's developmental picture and again then make some decisions about what is useful for them within the school. The medical evaluations if we wanted to start there are completed by a physical health provider. So this could be a physician, such as a pediatrician or a pediatric specialist, like a pediatric neurologist. A developmental pediatrician or other pediatric subspecialty. It could also include other medical providers like audiology, speech pathology, occupational therapy, and so forth. A medical evaluation, it's important to remember results in the assignments of a medical diagnosis if that's appropriate. And the reason why I think it's important to talk about that is, we are going to look at some places where medical evaluations overlap with behavioral health evaluations and where those two diagnostic buckets overlap a little bit. And then some places where they're very separate. Some medical diagnoses that a child can receive or an adolescent can receive may help qualify a student for special education eligibility. You know, and that could be in the case of hearing impairment, a student with a medical diagnosis of paralysis or some sort of medical diagnosis, of traumatic brain injury, centralized auditory processing disorder or autism. Related to that when we see a child has had an initial medical evaluation the frequency of evaluation or excuse me up re-evaluation or a follow-up evaluation is always determined by that medical provider. They may ask the family to come back in six months, in a year. But basically that physician, that medical doctor is responsible for prescribing the course of treatment and intervention, and sometimes they will do that in conjunction with other specialists or allied health providers. So most of us have been to a primary care physician who then may refer us to a specialist. So again, in the case of a child who is having some difficulty learning. You may start with your primary care pediatrician. They may refer you perhaps to a pediatric neurologist for some sort of neurological evaluation. They may also then refer you to an occupational therapy or a speech therapy evaluation. Sometimes those evaluations will then come back and inform a course of treatment. Sometimes that could include medication or it could include the provision of other sorts of "medically based therapy" like OT or speech therapy. And that's done outside of the school setting. So I think that's important to think about. And obviously the families are very, very important there. As well as other parties along with the medical provider in determining the course of treatment that will come with that evaluation. On the behavioral health evaluation, this is a very, very common evaluation that is received by many students with learning differences or behavioral differences within the school setting. A behavioral health evaluation must be completed by a licensed behavioral health provider. And that is typically a licensed medical doctor or a psychiatrist, right. A psychiatrist is a physician with a specialty and psychiatric medicine. So they would be an MD. Or a licensed psychologist who would typically be a PhD or something that you may see on evaluation reports that will say Psy.d, which is a psy d degree. That's a doctorate in psychology. So a different type of clinical doctoral licensed degree in psychology. And occasionally you might see some license psychologist that have an EdD after their name. But the licensed piece is the critical part here. And again I'm going to differentiate that a little bit more when we get in to talk about school evaluations because in order for a behavioral health evaluation to be acceptable. The person has to be licensed in the state in which they're providing service. That evaluation will result possibly if it is appropriate and the assignment of a behavioral health diagnosis. There is some overlap between what's considered a medical diagnosis and a behavioral health or physical health. Let me restart out over there again. There is overlap in some areas between what is considered a behavioral health diagnosis than a medical diagnosis. And two good examples of that are autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Children can receive those diagnoses and either a medical community like a developmental pediatrician or a developmental neurologist pediatric neurologist office. But they can also receive those diagnoses from a licensed psychologist. Where that diagnosis is first rendered isn't necessarily critically important as long as an appropriate diagnosis is rendered. But the eligibility for treatment that comes after that may be different in the medical community versus the behavioral health community. So the course of treatment that each system would prescribe for that child could be very, very different. And as is the case for the medical diagnosis a behavioral health diagnosis may also help to qualify a student for special education eligibility in conjunction with some other factors. When you have a behavioral health evaluation, the schedule for reevaluation required to assess the ongoing appropriateness of the behavioral health treatment is established really by the insurance carrier. The medical insurance carrier. So they will tell the providers that are issuing those evaluations. How often they want them redone. Whether it's on an annual basis. A six-month evaluation or review but basically the insurance company kind of sets the tone or the schedule for when those re-evaluations need to be done to establish the necessity of those services. And as with most things, the determination of that is something that families have a right to appeal or to request some reconsideration for. A couple of things that I wanted to sort of zero in on particularly for folks and non-traditional school setting is one of the most common types of behavioral health evaluations that parents look for for their children are evaluations when the child has behavioral disruptions that interfering with his or her ability to access their education. So that is typically when people seek evaluation for Wrap-around or BHRS, which stands for Behavioral Health Rehabilitation Services. In order for those services to be approved for a student, the clinician and the family need to establish what is called medical necessity for those services. Which means that the clinician needs to the licensed clinician to be able to demonstrate some sort of higher level of need, which is typically a health and safety threat for the child within the school environment, if that level of care is not provided. Wrap-around services are considered a higher level of care.